The Reading Room

"The Pillow Book (枕草子 Makura no Sōshi?) is a book of observations and musings recorded by Sei Shōnagon during her time as court lady to Empress Consort Teishi (定子) during the 990s and early 11th century in Heian Japan. The book was completed in the year 1002. In it she included lists of all kinds, personal thoughts, interesting events in court, poetry and some opinions on her contemporaries. While it is mostly a personal work, Shōnagon's writing and poetic skill makes it interesting as a work of literature, and it is valuable as a historical document. Part of it was revealed to the Court by accident during Shōnagon's life. The book was first translated into English in 1889 by T. Purcell and W. G. Aston. Other notable English translations were by Arthur Waley in 1928, Ivan Morris in 1967, and Meredith McKinney in 2006. The Dog Pillow is an Edo period parody." - Eivind from Bookmarklet

I don't think the pillow book is mentioned by any other name. Maybe it's something derived from Kama Sutra? - Eivind

"It sounded like a good idea when Maggie and John Anderson came up with it: Patronize only African-American owned businesses for a year. But, as Maggie Anderson, with co-author Ted Gregory, writes  in "Our Black Year: One Family's Quest to Buy Black in America's Racially Divided Economy" (PublicAffairs Books, 320 pages, $25.99) buying "Black" turned out to be much more complicated." - Derrick from Bookmarklet

I wonder if they spent any part of that year shopping for a black co-author. - Greg Schwartz

è BOB - Cesare Pyno Gattini

Humbert Humbert is freaking me out! - ☆ Mellyboo ☆

She might like Terry Pratchett's books about Tiffany Aching. The first one is The Wee Free Men. Cornelia Funke's Inksheart books are good, too. Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials is good, too. Has she read Susan Cooper's Dark Is Rising series? - Katy S

+1000 Robin Hobb - Todd Hoff

"Hansel and Gretel walk out of their own story and into eight other classic Grimm (and Grimm-inspired) fairy tales. An irreverent, witty narrator leads us through encounters with witches, warlocks, dragons, and the devil himself. As the siblings roam a forest brimming with menacing foes, they learn the true story behind the famous tales, as well as how to take charge of their destinies and create their own happily ever after. Because once upon a time, fairy tales were awesome." - Katy S from Bookmarklet

This was very amusing. If you like takes on fairy tales, you might like this. ETA: It is kiddie lit for upper-elementary reading levels. - Katy S

I could not put this book down (literally 8 hrs straight), it's "interesting". This is his masterpiece. It's a book for everyone and no one. Umm any review could never be understood without reading it....how could I explain? Anyone else read it. It's strange. [it looks like Jansons has?] - The Real sofarsoShawn

Focusing and finishing... finally…. here with the final remarks of Nietzsche’s in TSZ Part IV he is far from dogmatic. There's this statement I found really hot or academic words: remarkable in its simplistic brilliance, “there’s something to be said in favour of the exception only if does not try to become the rule.” . There’s A LOT of meaning there in what appears to be something only... more... - The Real sofarsoShawn

"Kadir Nelson may have won more honors than any of the most recent candidates for Caldecott medal, given by the American Library Association each year to “the most distinguished American picture book for children.” His paintings have appeared in museums and galleries around the world and on U.S. postage stamps, including two that celebrate Negro League baseball. But when the ALA named the winners of its 2012 awards on Monday, Nelson didn’t get the Caldecott for his Heart and Soul, as many had expected. He won his fourth Coretta Scott King Award, which only black authors or illustrators may receive. The King award is a high honor but one with less prestige and impact on sales than a Caldecott medal. And Nelson’s award has revived a debate about whether the ALA is ghetto-izing the black authors and illustrators who qualify for the identity-based prizes that it gives out along with honors open to all. Are writers and artists who look like shoo-ins for a King award being denied the Caldecott and Newbery medals that can have a much greater impact on their careers?" - Katy S from Bookmarklet

"Four out of five librarians are women, but when it comes to children’s book awards, nobody could accuse them of an excess of sisterhood. For decades the American Library Association has had a dismal record of honoring female artists with its Caldecott medal, given each year to “the most distinguished American picture book for children.” That record just got worse. Last week the ALA named the winners of the 2012 Caldecott medal and three Honor books, all four of whom were men. Long before that shutout for women, the number of female winners had sunk to its lowest level in the 74-year history of the prize. Women won 10 percent the Caldecott medals from 2000-2009 compared with 30 percent in the 1950s and 40 percent in the 1960s. They are also doing worse than men by virtually every other measure of the award. Male artists have won roughly twice as many Caldecott medals and Honor awards overall as their female counterparts. They have won all the Honor awards four times as often. And the... more... - Katy S from Bookmarklet

"Just a few minutes ago I pinged Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press and asked if it would be possible to track the sales of my eBooks in the next week in order to donate my share of those sales to Planned Parenthood, specifically for its breast cancer initiatives. He said it was, in the United States at least, and that SubPress would donate its share as well. So, between today and February 8, 2012, every time you buy a Subterranean Press eBook written by me here in the United States, the proceeds are going to Planned Parenthood. I will direct that the donation go specifically toward their breast cancer screening and educational activities, to help replace the funding lost from the Susan G. Komen Foundation. What ebooks does this cover? Here’s a list on Kindle; here’s another on the Nook. eBooks sold in other formats for other readers here in the US will be covered, too." - Katy S from Bookmarklet

"In a lending library you see people's real tastes, not their pretended ones, and one thing that strikes you is how completely the ‘classical’ English novelists have dropped out of favour. It is simply useless to put Dickens, Thackeray, Jane Austen, Trollope, etc. into the ordinary lending library; nobody takes them out. At the mere sight of a nineteenth-century novel people say, ‘Oh, but that's old!’ and shy away immediately. Yet it is always fairly easy to sell Dickens, just as it is always easy to sell Shakespeare. Dickens is one of those authors whom people are ‘always meaning to’ read, and, like the Bible, he is widely known at second hand. People know by hearsay that Bill Sikes was a burglar and that Mr Micawber had a bald head, just as they know by hearsay that Moses was found in a basket of bulrushes and saw the ‘back parts’ of the Lord." from Bookshop Memories by George Orwell (came to mind :) ) http://orwell.ru/library... - Eivind

It is a book I'd be very interested to hear your response on, Halil. - Eivind

Just read this yesterday, and found it to be an easy and enjoyable read. OK, I'll be honest, I burned through it. I'm a sucker for young adult fantasy romance type novels. Plus, I know the guy who co-authored it. And my husband is in the acknowledgements. But those biases aside, it was fun. And with a much healthier relationship and stronger, more capable heroine than something like Twilight (which, for the record, I also very much enjoyed). - Janelle Scarpelli

We don't talk about the bedazzling in public Janelle, nor the unlicensed taxidermy. - SteVe C

Even though I pre-ordered it, I can't bring myself to open it tonight. I'll probably put off reading it for awhile. - Katy S

"At Oxford in the nineteen-forties, Professor John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was generally considered the most boring lecturer around, teaching the most boring subject known to man, Anglo-Saxon philology and literature, in the most boring way imaginable. “Incoherent and often inaudible” was Kingsley Amis’s verdict on his teacher. Tolkien, he reported, would write long lists of words on the blackboard, obscuring them with his body as he droned on, then would absent-mindedly erase them without turning around. “I can just about stand learning the filthy lingo it’s written in,” Philip Larkin, another Tolkien student, complained about the old man’s lectures on “Beowulf.” “What gets me down is being expected to admire the bloody stuff.” It is still one of the finest jests of the modern muses that this fogged-in English don was going home nights to work on perhaps the most popular adventure story ever written, thereby inventing one of the most successful commercial formulas that publishing possesses, and establishing the foundation of the modern fantasy industry." - Katy S from Bookmarklet

I have no idea what this book is about. I didn't read the jacket, nor the blurb on Goodreads. I don't care. I've only read a couple of Heinlein books and my feelings were widely divergent. I loved 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress'. It was exactly what I needed to read when I read it. Years later, I read 'Stranger in a Strange Land' and found it dull and very much common, which made me understand the people I knew who loved that book (most it's the only Heinlein they've read). So, this book is just to see if there's a middle ground. So far, I'm delighted at the humor. That's a surprise from Heinlein (for me) and a little bonus. - Anika from Bookmarklet

Just finished the book and have a smile on my face. It was a really cute read, so surprising (for me) from Heinlein. I was telling my husband how it was funny reading it considering that Heinlein didn't expect the Civil Rights Movement or the Vietnam War. To be sure, he did mention another war. Some things, in the future (2001) he got right and wrong at the same time; a 24-hr bank... more... - Anika

"If you, like us, find the week between new episodes intolerably long, try filling the gap with some selections from our Downton Abbey reading list. On it are some of our favorite facts (such as Lady Almina and the Real DownAmerican Heiress at SPLton Abbey), fiction (American Heiress by Daisy Goodwin and A Countess Below Stairs by Eva Ibbotson), fashion (The Edwardian Modiste with patterns to make your own fashions) and photography of the Downton Abbey world. Take a look at the complete list, place your holds and then head on over to The Guardian to take a quiz to find the answer to Which Downton Abbey character are you? My first result was the Dowager Countess, so I took the quiz again and became Lady Mary. I’m sticking with that." - Katy S from Bookmarklet

"Goodreads, the social network for reading and reviewing books, had to make a change this month. It moved away from its main source of book data, the Amazon Product Advertising API, citing its "many restrictions." It completed the transition to Ingram Book Company's data today, and it also draws from other open data sources such as libraries. The transition went smoothly, but Goodreads did lose some data. "Fewer than 2% of our 7 million users have books currently affected," Goodreads says. The problem most visible to users will be missing cover images. Goodreads is in the process of uploading replacements. One percent of Goodreads books will appear blank, listed as "Unknown Title" and "Unknown Author," while Goodreads looks for a new data source for them. There's a great lesson here about building a business on top of a competitor's API, but Goodreads has made the switch in the nick of time." - John (bird whisperer) from Bookmarklet

Apparently not. - Katy S

Yes. There's a change happening over there. Many books had had their info imported from Amazon, but there's been some legal issues. Goodreads has been messaging their librarians, asking them to "rescue" certain books by 30 January, or info will be lost. Apparently, that applies to cover images, content, etc - Brent from iPhone

Thanks :o) - ☆ Mellyboo ☆

"After checking the author page for Maria Cruz, who that day had the top-selling erotica book in Amazon's U.K. Kindle store, she counted 40 erotica ebook titles, including Sister Pretty Little Mouth, My Step Mom and Me, Wicked Desires Steamy Stories and Domenating [sic] Her, plus one called Dracula's Amazing Adventure. Most erotica authors stay within the genre, so Sharazade was surprised Cruz had ventured into horror. Amazon lets customers click inside a book for a sample of text and Sharazade was impressed with how literate it was. She extracted a sentence fragment, googled it, and found that Cruz had copy and pasted the text from Bram Stoker's Dracula. Curious, Sharazade keyed in phrases from other Cruz ebooks and discovered that every book she checked was stolen." - Katy S from Bookmarklet

Not a new article, but I thought some of y'all might be interested. - Katy S

Interesting I have couple things at literotica have to look around - WarLord

"Bookish girls tend to mark phases of their lives by periods of intense literary character identification. Schoolgirls of the ’70s had their Deenie and Sally J. Freedman and Margaret moments, muddling through adolescence in the guise of one Judy Blume heroine or another. And for almost a century and a half, girls have fluctuated between seasons of Amy and Meg and Jo March, imagining themselves alternately with blond corkscrew curls, eldest sister wisdom or writerly ambitions. But for those who came of age anytime during the past half-century, the most startling transformation occurred upon reading Madeleine L’Engle’s Newbery Medal-winning classic, “A Wrinkle in Time,” which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. It was under L’Engle’s influence that we willed ourselves to be like Meg Murry, the awkward girl who suffered through flyaway hair, braces and glasses but who was also and to a much greater degree concerned with the extent of her own intelligence, the whereabouts of her... more... - Katy S from Bookmarklet

Madeleine L'Engle will always be my imaginary grandmother. - Marianne

I think this is, literally, the most grotesque story I've ever read. - ☆ Mellyboo ☆ from Bookmarklet

Prolly not going to read the story, but that illustration reminds me of a deKooning. - Auntie Buttinsky Botts

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. I got so upset at one point I actually cried. - Starmama from FFHound(roid)!

Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. Parts of the portrayals of small town Midwestern life are so "on" that it felt a little too close too home. - Katy S

"One of the valuable, if unsung, roles of the university press is to publish local history, works about the state or city of their host institution. Often enough, these are staid books — diaries of pioneer women or biographies of little-known governors. But with Dmitry Samarov’s “Hack: Stories From a Chicago Cab,” the University of Chicago Press has produced a work about the Windy City that could not be grittier or more up-to-the-minute — so much so that it draws on material originally published by Samarov on Twitter and his blog. These vignettes, organized according to the schedule of a typical driver’s week — from the Monday doldrums to the bacchanal of Saturday night — constitute a work of ground-level urban sociology, showing parts of Chicago life that few novelists or academics could access." - Derrick from Bookmarklet

Just got this and plan on reading it soon. - Derrick

All my must-reads are situational... show me yours and I'll show you mine that you might like;). - Marianne

I have not. I tend to stay away from the darker side of human history when it comes to reading for pleasure. Do you have any other suggestions? - Kristin

book for his age and reading level is uncomfortable for him to read, so I don't want to give him pleasure reading that is difficult in that way. So, that's one reason why I'm thinking graphic novels or comics might be a better choice for him. However, if you know of nicely spaced books for that age group, I'd love to hear about them. Thanks! - Katy S

Bump: the AV Club looks at a bunch of all-ages comics. http://www.avclub.com/article... - Andrew C (✓)

"With all the stop SOPA and PIPA stuff in the news, a bit of news from Tuscon has gone largely unnoticed. In schools, works by Chicano authors and oh yeah, that dude Shakespeare have been banned. Ok, so not banned but teachers can't talk about them, read them in class, have them in their classes, cite them or otherwise use them as part of their lessons. Seriously. Since when did THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET become dangerous? Really? How about LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE? Both of those books are on the list which you can find here. Luis Alberto Urrea has FIVE books on the list, some of the finest non-fiction reporting and essays I've seen written. I believe that vato even was a Pulitzer prize finalist for his writing back in 2005 for one of the very books on the list - The Devil's Highway which won the 2004 Lannan Literary Award. Of course it is about a bunch of immigrants lost in the desert of Arizona, so no surprise they don't want it cited. God forbid ARIZONA gets mentioned in a book! Hijole, quick yank that sucker off the shelf!" - Anika from Bookmarklet

"We're asking everyone, all over the world to submit a video of yourself reading a passage from one of the banned books. We will post EVERY single video submission we get. If you are an author of one of the works, we welcome your words, your quotes, your videos, your thoughts. We will link back to your blogs, promote your videos on Twitter using the hashtag #dearArizona and push as hard as we collectively can to bring those books back to the classrooms in Tuscon." - Anika

Like meaning I'm appalled and ashamed of my America #sadness - WarLord

"“I suspect that TUSD is using many books which were never legally approved, in many different courses, and we have to track those books down and either remove them or go through proper curriculum approvals. Staff has already begun that search process.” – TUSD board president Mark Stegeman. Are books like human beings, both starting off life in original sin? Both “illegal” until baptism or getting their papers? In Arizona the tracking down of Mexicans has now turned into the tracking down of our books about our history; illegal until Mark Stegeman and his board approves them?" - Katy S from Bookmarklet

I should read more Nietzsche. I think I've held off b/c I tell myself I should read it all in German when, really, I don't have to. - Katy S

Oh, yeah I gotcha, I was referring to his characteristic aphoristic, non-prolix writing style, he doesn't mince words, cuts to the chase, when I commented "cut to the marrow" (and there using too many adjectives, was an example of the opposite); consequent to his succinctness his why he's so "eminently quotable". WWND What Would Nietzsche do? He's doesn't hide behind vagueness or verbosity, he's comes out loud and clear where he stands. - The Real sofarsoShawn

I am. Just can never get the damn account to feed into FF. - Corinne L

I yam... - Just Katie